In this lively and informative workshop, you will learn how to harness the power of true, personal storytelling to create an engaging and accessible story about your research focus, project, or goals. Workshop includes lecture, discussion, and a chance for everyone to share a 3-5 minute story and receive feedback.

Please bring paper, pen, and a willingness to experiment, with you to the workshop.

Workshop Mission

Participants will learn to use the tools of true, personal storytelling to create and share an engaging and accessible story about their research focus, project, or goals.

Workshop Outcomes

Participants will:

enhance their understanding of true, personal storytelling as a powerful tool of communication to engage and connect with a variety of audiences, and explain complex issues in an accessible and relatable way.

improve their ability to identify and enact the principles of powerful true, personal storytelling.

create a 3- to 5-minute engaging true, personal tale that illuminates their research focus and findings.

share that personal research tale with a group of peers and receive feedback.

Workshop Structure

09:00 AM – 10:00 AM – Registration and breakfast

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM – Lecture

Break

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM – 3-5 people tell 3-5-minute stories and get feedback in front of entire group

Laura Wexler is the co-founder and co-producer of The Stoop Storytelling Series, a popular cultural event and podcast in which “ordinary” people tell extraordinary true tales about their lives. Since 2006, Laura has presented workshops in true, personal storytelling for a range of organizations, businesses, and individuals. Her storytelling curriculum is based on 10 years of teaching memoir writing at the collegiate and graduate level, and her experience coaching nearly 2,000 people to tell the true, personal tales of their lives. In addition to her work with The Stoop, Laura is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America (Scribner), as well as nonfiction published in The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She has developed a TV pilot for Amazon Studios, and is currently writing a narrative feature. She and her writing partner wrote and produced a Virtual Reality film that world premiered at Sundance Festival 2018.